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Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Labour Peers in the House of Lords are currently having a mass collegiate filibuster to delay the AV referendum bill by endlessly discussing trivial amendments between themselves without anyone from the Coalition saying anything.

They know they can't beat the bill, because the government outnumbers them. But the AV referendum is meant to happen in May. But it takes quite a while to get ready to hold a nationwide referendum, so if the Labour Peers can hold up the bill long enough there won't be enough time to prepare for the referendum, and they'll have to delay it. This would be quite embarrassing and annoying for the government.

So the government's got them debating 24 hours a day (including through the night) until they give up. They're quite elderly though so they've laid on refreshments, food, wine, beds, talks, board games, bridge and toothbrushes to keep them going.

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Sometime ago I posted an article called "Weak" Democracy. This described my idea about what is sufficient for a way of organising society to hold democratic, moral legitimacy. Here I describe an analogous concept concerning the role of religion in society, and the extent to which it is necessary or desirable to exclude particular religious or ideological opinions from the public sphere (for a society to have fair, moral legitimacy), and also why this is important.

“There is no such thing as a right to pretend something you oppose doesn't exist, and no such thing as a right to be shielded from the fact that most people reject your values. So nonbelievers simply do not have a right to live in a society free of religious sentiment. And public displays of religious sentiment - the Ten Commandments, Nativity sets in public parks, the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance - are a straightforward First Amendment issue. Freedom of speech, which is not, I believe, limited only to individuals. Government agencies and bodies have it too. The public exercises of religion listed above involve an absolutely trivial expenditure of public resources and don't infringe on the rights of non-Christians in the slightest. Opposing these exercises is not about protecting the rights of the minority but about suppressing the rights of a majority, using the courts because opponents have failed to make their case on its merits. But public displays of religious belief send an exclusionary message. Maybe. But the last time I checked, messages of all kinds were protected by the First Amendment. Even exclusionary ones. And if you find yourself being excluded, maybe you might even ask whether you're on the right side of the issues. You'd feel differently if you were in the minority. I've spent a total of two years of my life in Islamic countries. If you're expecting me to buy into the idea that it's a violation of my rights to have the majority express a different religious sentiment, you have definitely picked the wrong person.”Professor Steve Dutch: Some Issues Where Liberals are missing the boat.

The above passage by Professor Dutch precisely encapsulates my beliefs on Secularism. I support Secularism. The Secularism that means giving each member of society a level playing field and avoiding all use or threat of force against them, or the restriction of basic opportunities on grounds of their faith or belief, is a good thing and an essential element of society. The same is true of avoiding every type of discrimination on grounds except the direct defense of that same society from immediate force or the threat of immediate force; and the obvious discriminations we make daily on grounds of immediate merit.

This Secularism is about respecting the dignity of each person and that their potential to contribute to society is based on their fundamental and basic identity as an individual human person and not on the basis of belonging to any privileged group, whether defined by heritage or belief. This Secularism is based on the understanding that honest and good men may disagree about complicated issues without one being either evil or stupid, and that it is not the nature or even the coherence of the beliefs one holds, nor the backgrounds one identifies with, that makes a man good or evil, or competent or incompetent, but rather the specifically moral actions he takes and the words he speaks and the knowledge he holds and the merit for the task he outwardly displays.

The idea is to accept that each man holds his conscience in good faith and make as much accommodation for the fallen, fallible but essentially decent nature of humanity as possible. From this basis, and an appreciation of human dignity, secularism wishes to avoid forcing any man to become a martyr because of his conscience. To not force any man to give up his chance for opportunity because of what he believes or who he is. In other words, to construct a society with the least force must be deployed as possible, on the basis that ideas are the correct means to combat ideas, words the correct means to combat words and force only correct when absolutely necessary to combat force or the immediate threat of force. This is a pacifist notion, only desiring to use force when it is most necessary, to restrict other immediate force or threat of force, and to utilise different methods the rest of the time.

On the other hand, Secularism that is based on banning anything that may be of religious inspiration or association specifically from the “public sphere” is neither desirable nor necessary. It is the repression of cultural expression that serves no purpose apart from to harass a majority or minority. Culture and belief are almost universally things which have public expression written into their nature. A person’s beliefs should affect how they think and act and as far as a person or group has a public life the expression of a person’s or group’s religious or cultural identity will be public.

Furthermore a majority in a society, or even a minority with a position of authority has the right to express their belief or culture within the fabric of that society. There is no theory of the state or government that says everything it does or associates with must be acceptable to all members of that society, as long as it does not use force, threat of force, or discrimination of opportunity then those of different opinion have no grounds to object on the basis of a lack of moral legitimacy.

The difference between these two types of Secularism, the first I call "weak" secularism and the second "strong", is simple. It is the difference between what they are trying to achieve. My idea here is that the driving good behind secularism, and much secularisation that has occurred in society, is not that removing religion or other ideologies from a position of prominence or privilege in society is a good in itself, but rather that it is a good as far as it provides opportunity and space for all persons's to flourish and fulfil potential as their conscience dictates they must. It is the principle of minimising the force needed to maintain society and maximising the space for opportunity it holds. It is also a pluralist notion, to trim ideologies back to create as much space and freedom for merit and individual potential to flourish and shine.

Weak secularism is based on a mutual respect, and a desire to give each the space to express oneself. This applies both for an established and majority faith and belief for a different or individual faith and the different or individual faith for the majority faith or belief, even if it is embedded in society and the expression of that society. This respect and tolerance goes both ways. Each admits the other the chance to pursue opportunity and human flourishing as they believe they must. It seeks to maximise the possibility for expression, whether minority or majority, whether official or unofficial.

The 2nd, on the other hand, claims to seek to provide space for public expression and flourishing by restricting that same expression and flourishing. It, hence, seeks to restrict what expression may be acceptable just as much as any establishment of religion or another ideology. Its attempt is not to maximise freedom for all, which is the basis of a good secularism, but rather to restrict it. It hence fails as a basis for a society built around a core of eternal moral truth of seeking peaceful co-existence between people, that is seeking to build a society that provides all space, and works with the nature of human beings.

It must also be noted that this applies to other ideologies as well as religions. As far as a way of organising society restricts potential for development for those who hold certain (metaphysical) views it is not secular, regardless of public religious content or not. In this model the old Soviet Union was less secular than today's Britain, because in the first you must hold to certain official ideologies and pieties to be allowed space in society, whether Marxism or the rule of the Communist party, whereas in the 2nd you do not. This is despite the official atheism and 'Secularism' of the first and the Established Religion, and Bishops in the legislature, of the 2nd.

The point is that restricting one type of expression is only a good as far as that expression is directly restricting another. Beyond that it is just restricting expression for the sake of it and thus directly opposed to the creation of as free a society as possible, with as much opportunity as possible for all. This is the true aim that makes so much secularisation a good thing, not the underlying removal of religious content and expression itself. And it is only when we realise this true nature about what is good about the phenomena that we can realise precisely what to do to maximise this.

Wednesday, 5 January 2011

On being Progressive, distributional impact, fairness, cabbages and Kings (and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings - well, not really.)
This article follows on from previous articles outlining the economic arguments around the Coalition's budget plans, introducing the structure of the public finances and the plans for reducing the deficit, looking at the feasibility of closing the deficit by cutting military spending and an analysis of the taxation changes. This is the final article on the distributional impact and fairness of the government's plans. I've separated them out to try to keep them shorter.

"Progressive", "Fair".

These are undoubtedly the words that have come to define politics in Britain over the last couple of years. Not necessarily in terms of actual policy enacted, but definitely in terms of the language of our political discussion. We argue about whether policies are wise, whether they are affordable, whether they are right, but more and more we have come to argue about whether policies are fair or progressive. It has been one of the changes wrought by the 13 long years of Labour rule. Today these terms are thrown around like cheap confetti by almost every party and politician of whatever hue or stripe as basically synonymous terms. This widespread usage by completely opposing politicians to describe contradictory policies may give you the impression that these terms are largely meaningless. And you would be right. But the question is, can we save any precise meaning at all from this avalanche of linguistic abuse?

'Fair' is one of the first words that any child learns, as any parent or child can tell you. A sense of things be fair or unfair is one of the most basic of human judgements, and arguably the basis of much of our moral sense. Like all such terms though it has no clear, definable meaning. We all think we know fair and unfair when we see it. Roughly, it means equitable, in proportion with what is right. It is, in other words, a value judgment. In other words, referring to various policies as fair, is little more than declaring you think they are morally right and/or a good idea, i.e. it conveys almost no actual information, since we generally assume that if someone is pushing a policy they think it is good/right. It would be bloody odd if politicians were pushing policies they personally thought were a load of immoral rubbish. Referring to a policy as 'fair' is generally useless. But what it can do, at best, is to imply a certain, not only efficient but also, moral judgement about the effects of a policy. But beyond that it's pretty empty.

'Progressive' is a slightly different (but equally annoying) kettle of fish. It has become, if anything, even more prominent than 'Fair'as a political descriptive. It sadly lacks 'Fair's basic and understandable connotations. It is a technical term, just one with a vague definition. For a while after I heard it first it confused me because I had no idea what it meant. From context I could only tell that it seemed to mean 'good' in a vague sense, but I could not at first work out anymore than that. So I spent some time studying it. Taken literally progressive means to to support progress, but that is little more than a tautology. No politician claims to be opposing progress, any more than motherhood or apple pie. So where did this word come from? The answer is that it came from America, and it became more and more popular first among Labour supporters and politicians in the 1990's to describe themselves, and then among others. As far as I could tell from some study these people seemed to use it to mean Socialism without the state ownership of industries (since that has been discredited since the 1970's). More generally it has come to mean fluffy and friendly and kind and good, and most importantly: us, as opposed to them. On which basis it was also appropriated by first the Liberal Democrats and then more recently even the Conservatives, and particularly the current Coalition government.

In defence of some of those who use it though. There is one area where the term progressive can be said to have a precise meaning. That is, in reference to fiscal policy. In particular, taxation. A tax is progressive if it hits the rich harder than the poor. This originally could mean just in terms of the amount raised. these days however it generally means as a proportion of income. That is, for a tax to be progressive it must take up a higher percentage of the income of the rich than the poor, rather than just a larger cash amount. The opposite of this is regressive. To give some examples: Income tax is progressive, because it is charged at higher rates the higher your income is; VAT is more or less neutral, because rich and poor pay at the same percentage rate; The BBC licence fee is regressive, because it a flat amount charged regardless of income, and thus obviously takes a higher proportion of the income of the poor than the rich.

In extension to this financial system or policy of spending and taxation is progressive if it enhances the opportunity or chances of the least advantaged in society, generally in terms of redistributing money from the rich to the poor in society, or at least hitting the rich harder than the poor in percentage terms. And is in this sense that we can analyse whether the Coalition's deficit reduction plan is progressive, as the Chancellor claimed, first at the June budget, and then at the CSR. This was an important point, after the Conservatives campaigned claiming Progressive credentials, and also to the Lib Dems

This is a big question. Is it possible to have major deficit reduction plan of tax rises and spending cuts that is also progressive, in the sense of hitting the rich proportionately financially harder than the poor? Or, in other words, how does the government's deficit reduction plan impact people differently across the income distribution.

On the one hand the government has raised taxes on the rich and taken efforts to protect core areas of progressive spending on health, education, welfare and international aid, as well as for children and pensioners. On these grounds it claims its plan is progressive. But this has been strongly contested, to say the least, by other groups. The analysis of the government's plans has been divided into two separate sections. We have had distributional analyses of the impact of the changes in terms of taxes and benefits, and then separately the estimated impact of the spending cuts. These can then be combined to give the over-all impact of government's deficit reduction program by income decile of the population (the poorest to richest tenths of the population).

My personal view has always been that the government has tried quite hard to make sure that we are "all in this together" in the sense of the pain of deficit reduction being shared across the population. But that it would be almost impossible for any significant deficit reduction plan to actually impact the rich harder than the poor, without being mostly consisted of crippling tax rises. If I had to guess I would say that the government's plan will likely hit the poor two to three times harder than the rich. Because our system is so progressive anyway, meaning that the least well off benefit more from welfare and rely more on public services, and pay less in tax, pretty much any attempt to reign back what the state does will hit the poor harder in proportion to the rich. That is, although the rich will contribute more to the deficit reduction plan in terms of cash this will still consist of a smaller portion of their income, due to the disparity in income, and the extent to which government spending is slanted to benefit the less well off, and that raising taxes on the rich is actually quite hard because they pay high taxes already.

Analysis of the distributional impact of the government's spending plans breaks down into two sections: Welfare and Tax changes, i.e. direct cash transfers, and departmental spending cuts i.e. estimated value lost from services received. The first of these is relatively easy to estimate, as it involves actual cash transfers, whether in terms of welfare or taxes. The second is somewhat more dubious, as is involves estimating the value people receive from public services in terms of a cash value, and then guessing how spending cuts may have affected this cash value.

The first off the blocks to attack the government's claims of the progressive nature of its deficit plan was the IFS. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has actually been around for 35 years, but has recently seemed to appear into the media consciousness. It is a think-tank that produces work looking at the details and effects of the financial and distributive effects of policy. Since the Coalition took government its pronouncements on the impact of government policy have, for some reason, been received by the media with a degree of trust and authority generally reserved for Holy Writ. This slight oddity to one side though, it is true that the IFS' research is generally very good. And an excellent starting point.

The IFS produced a report on the distributional impact of the Tax and Welfare policy changes by income decile, but not the impact of the public spending changes. The most relevant graphs is below. It shows the impact of all the the tax and welfare changes proposed by the government up until the CSR in October, apart from the CGT rise and the Child benefit changes.

That means by income decile from poorest to richest the changes will mean a hit on income of:

Decile

Impact (£/year)

Impact as % of net income

1(poorest)

-£600

-5.5%

2

-£750.00

-5.0%

3

-£800.00

-4.5%

4

-£850.00

-4.3%

5

-£800.00

-3.5%

6

-£900.00

-3.6%

7

-£1,000.00

-3.2%

8

-£1,000.00

-2.8%

9

-£1,200.00

-2.6%

10(richest)

-£3,750.00

-4.5%

From the graph it is clearly visible that by income decile the changes are somewhat regressive across the income distribution from the 1st-9th deciles, though the richest 10th do take a particularly large hit. It is solidly progressive in reference to the amounts involved, but not progressive enough to make it progressive in terms of the percentage hit to income.